L.L.Bean, the 100 year old “Down East” retailer of outdoor apparel and gear has finally joined the mobile world with a smartphone optimized m-Commerce web app.  It’s surprising it took Bean this long as the company has a long history of innovation.  It pioneered the now common concept of free shipping for all products and is often cited as a model of customer service excellence.

Created by m-commerce specialist house Usablenet, the mobile site lets you browse and search the L. L. Bean catalog of over 2000 items, order online and pay by entering shipping and credit card details or by using an address and card stored in your L. L. Bean user profile.  A click to call number is provided if you rather not deal with mobile data entry.

Bean and Useablenet say the web app is optimized for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices. While that’s true, the design seems to degrade gracefully in lesser browsers.  It works well in Opera Mini and I even found it usable, at least for browsing the catalog,  on a basic prepaid feature phone running the ancient Openwave browser.

Filed in: Wap Review Directory – Shopping/Stores

Ratings: Content Usability

Mobile Link: m.llbean.com